2nd opinion: Not the hot ticket

The other week, I reported on one of Labour's Big Conversations. We gathered in a shiny new school hall in the north London borough of Enfield (Downing Street approved the venue) and, after detailed discussion, local residents had a chance to put their thoughts directly to the prime minister.

Participants were meant to stick to an agenda of crime, education, health and were enjoined to be positive in their recommendations for doing things differently. But there were no thought police on hand to stop them challenging Blair, so some did. All in all, it was a genuine attempt to break away from normal "yah boo" politics.

But – maybe it was the participants, maybe it was the script – housing did not get much of a look in.

There was some talk about inheritance tax and owner-occupation but no one could have concluded that housing, in any tenure, was a hot ticket issue. Certainly the party notetakers reporting to Matthew Taylor at Number 10 as he swots on the content of Labour's election manifesto won't have underlined housing.

Some of the reasons for this are obvious. The reasonably housed – that is, most of us – aren't doing too badly. House prices are predicted to rise significantly again this year, powering consumption through the feelgood factor and making us all (that is, the 70% of us who own our homes minus those who live in housing renewal areas) think we are getting wealthier.

Those who rent aren't suffering, either: recent rent rises in the social sector have been moderate and the housing benefit pilots are proving a lot less painful than some had predicted. On certain estates, things have demonstrably got better. There is new security, new roofs, new paintwork.

Of course you can't generalise. The nature of housing is its specificity to place. But you do begin to see why housing is fairly low on the agenda.

That's not to deny need, and need that is growing. At a recent Commons housing seminar convened by Edmonton MP Andy Love, who chairs the backbench committee on homelessness, Shelter policy director Sue Regan expounded the family stresses of bed and breakfast and London MPs complained of more overcrowding.

Regan said housing should come above health in the pecking order of spending priorities.

But even if that case could be made as an intellectual proposition – for which you would need a way of comparing and contrasting different kinds of social need – it doesn't work politically. Housing just isn't on the front burner.

Look at the response to Kate Barker's report on housing supply. Or rather listen – I seemed to hear a lot of silences. Interest groups, including registered social landlords, seemed reluctant to speak out, ceding the floor to the nimbys of the Campaign to Protect Rural England or to the housebuilders, whom Barker makes into part of the problem of undersupply but also part of the solution.

Yes, the "new politics of housing" is going to be difficult. It involves telling the owner-occupying "haves" that the gravy train of rising house prices is going to have to come to a halt, or at least decelerate mightily through a combination of new taxes and enhanced supply.

It also involves the social housing sector reinventing itself (again) as a campaign, becoming a movement.

Somebody has to start talking loudly and convincingly to owner-occupiers about housing need and their part in filling it, if housing is to have any part in Labour's – or anybody else's – Big Conversation.